IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tky/fseres/2002cf176.html

Irreversible Investment and Knightian Uncertainty

Author

Listed:
  • Kiyohiko G. Nishimura

    (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo)

  • Hiroyuki Ozaki

    (Faculty of Economics, Tohoku University)

Abstract

When firms decide about irreversible investment, they may not have perfect confidence about their perceived probability measure describing future uncertainty. They may think other probability measures perturbed from the original one are also probable. Uncertainty characterized by not a single probability measure but a set of probability measures is called Knightian uncertainty. The effect of Knightian uncertainty on the value of irreversible investment opportunity is shown to be drastically different from that of the traditional uncertainty in the form of risk. Specifically, an increase in Knightian uncertainty decreases the value of investment opportunity while an increase in risk increases it.

Suggested Citation

  • Kiyohiko G. Nishimura & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2002. "Irreversible Investment and Knightian Uncertainty," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-176, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    • Handle: RePEc:tky:fseres:2002cf176
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/2002/2002cf176.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    2. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474, December.
    3. Gilboa, Itzhak, 1987. "Expected utility with purely subjective non-additive probabilities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-88, February.
    4. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ulf von Kalckreuth, 2003. "Exploring the role of uncertainty for corporate investment decisions in Germany," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 139(II), pages 173-206, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nishimura, Kiyohiko G. & Ozaki, Hiroyuki, 2007. "Irreversible investment and Knightian uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 668-694, September.
    2. Kiyohiko G. Nishimura & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2001. "Search under the Knightian Uncertainty," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-112, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    3. Andreas Lehnert & Wayne Passmore, 1999. "Pricing systemic crises: monetary and fiscal policy when savers are uncertain," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-33, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Junyi Chai & Zhiquan Weng & Wenbin Liu, 2021. "Behavioral Decision Making in Normative and Descriptive Views: A Critical Review of Literature," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-14, October.
    5. Dong, Xueqi, 2021. "Uncertainty Aversion and Convexity in Portfolio Choice," MPRA Paper 108264, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Ehud Lehrer, 2009. "A new integral for capacities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(1), pages 157-176, April.
    7. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Horst Zank, 2023. "Source and rank-dependent utility," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 949-981, May.
    8. Stanis{l}aw M. S. Halkiewicz, 2025. "NA-DiD: Extending Difference-in-Differences with Capabilities," Papers 2507.12690, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2025.
    9. Faro, José Heleno & Lefort, Jean-Philippe, 2019. "Dynamic objective and subjective rationality," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(1), January.
    10. Marcello Basili, 2006. "A Rational Decision Rule with Extreme Events," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(6), pages 1721-1728, December.
    11. Yehuda Izhakian, 2012. "Ambiguity Measurement," Working Papers 12-01, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    12. Aurélien Baillon & Zhenxing Huang & Asli Selim & Peter P. Wakker, 2018. "Measuring Ambiguity Attitudes for All (Natural) Events," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(5), pages 1839-1858, September.
    13. Yoram Halevy & Vincent Feltkamp, 2005. "A Bayesian Approach to Uncertainty Aversion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(2), pages 449-466.
    14. Amit Kothiyal & Vitalie Spinu & Peter Wakker, 2014. "An experimental test of prospect theory for predicting choice under ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 1-17, February.
    15. Craig Webb, 2010. "Agreeing to spin the subjective roulette wheel: Bargaining with subjective mixtures," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1005, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    16. Blavatskyy, Pavlo R., 2013. "Two examples of ambiguity aversion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 206-208.
    17. Assa, Hirbod & Zimper, Alexander, 2018. "Preferences over all random variables: Incompatibility of convexity and continuity," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 71-83.
    18. Peter Wakker, 2011. "Jaffray’s ideas on ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 71(1), pages 11-22, July.
    19. Dong, Xueqi & Liu, Shuo Li, 2021. "Proportional Tax under Ambiguity," MPRA Paper 107668, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Treich, Nicolas, 2010. "The value of a statistical life under ambiguity aversion," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 15-26, January.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tky:fseres:2002cf176. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CIRJE administrative office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ritokjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.